not just the digital divide but the opportunity divide. >> watch the communicators monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> up next, a conversation about the new book, the american president, from teddy roosevelt to bill clinton. he talks with historian douglas brinkley about the president he has met and shares his insight on others like william taft, harry truman, and calvin coolidge. the new york historical society hosted this 90 minute event. [applause] >> good morning, thank you for being here. one public service announcement. we will be taking questions. when that happens, we ask you to just ask one question, tried to keep it brief, but also tell us your name. we will try to get as many

people through the microphones as we can. two staff members will be on hand. we will be going back and forth and picking up people to ask questions. it is an absolute thrill for me to be here, because william leuchtenburg is a hero of mine. i did my doctorate in u.s. presidential diplomatic history, and his books were a seminal reading when i was coming through the ranks and getting my doctorate. i still now use and teach his books at my class in rice university on the american presidency. i found that one of his books about fdr, was just an absolute classic. you have not even considered understanding our modern times without reading that book. what a long legacy fdr passed on to our politics after his death.

we want to begin today by asking you -- congratulations on the new book. it is epic. has that been a dream of yours, to write a book that covers all the 20th-century presidents? how did that idea come to you? mr. leuchtenburg: i was at a conference at the university of pennsylvania, about eight years ago. the conference was on the presidency. i was surprised and delighted to have a distinguished scholar of to me, ande ologies say that the foundation wanted to commission me to write such a book. i couldn't get to it

immediately, because i was finishing one book, and hadn't started another book. arthur schlesinger asked me to write a short biography of herbert hoover for a series of published by times books, so i had to get that book finished in the next started and done before i could get on with this. but it was a sense of being given an opportunity for a capstone of a lifetime of writing about american presidents. franklin roosevelt, that you have just written about, but to see and educate myself, as well and all of the presidents, starting with the assassination of william mckinley and ending in january of 2001 with bill

mr. brinkley:we associate your career often with fdr. i know you are great friends with arthur schlesinger, and the two of you have dominated thinking on franklin roosevelt. well is your relationship with arthur schlesinger junior like? mr. leuchtenburg: i first encountered him when i was on the national staff of americans for democratic action in washington. and then i was the massachusetts state director, and when -- a rocky mountain organizer for them. the first conference that was held in washington, in march 1947, i remember hubert humphrey, who is the 37-year-old young mayor of minneapolis on

stage, and saying he wished his parents could see him because they would not have imagined he and eleanor roosevelt were on the same stage. afterwards, i talked to arthur schlesinger junior about a research project that, i as a graduate student was interested in, and that started a lifelong friendship. not many years later, i was appointed to the faculty at harvard, and we were colleagues together. in the years i was teaching at columbia, he was in the graduate center and the city university of new york so we saw one another. mr. brinkley: the late historian stephen ambrose once mentioned to me, we use as a test, abandon the chronology at your own peril. let's go little bit chronologically today through the presidents in your book, beginning with the assassination

of when -- william mckinley in buffalo, and how theodore roosevelt becomes president. how would you describe the personality of three door roosevelt -- theodore roosevelt? mr. leuchtenburg: [laughter] i had the great pleasure of working with ken burns almost from the beginning of his career. the most recent one appeared on screen, was "the roosevelt's." and in it, another friend tells the story of a man calling on theodore roosevelt, and explosive sounds coming from the room. afterwards, when the visitor walked out, someone said to him, "what did you say to theodore roosevelt?" the man said, " i told him my name." [laughter] mr. brinkley: people talk about

the progressive era, and we talk about theodore roosevelt as being a progressive president. do you consider him a bleeding progressive? mr. leuchtenburg: i spent so many years teaching that progressive era, and i think -- i was mentioning, medieval the eology, trying to define what was meant by progressivism, it has interested me for a long time. i found out i would never define it. if you mean, was roosevelt a change maker? yes, i think he was. it was one of the surprises in writing the book. many historians have said, the

modern presidency begins with fdr. the more i wrote about theodore roosevelt, the more i read about him, the more i was convinced what i said was wrong. the real turning point in the history of the presidency was when theodore roosevelt offense to the presidency -- ascends to the presidency. that is when the american people have the sense that the man in the white house can shape the nation. that was a view that had never been held before. the dynamic way in which he performed the task for president was actually more important than the specific legislation that came out of it, especially the

area you have written about. the impact he had on american conservation. this cannot be a mutual admiration society, but if you have not read " wilderness warrior," you have a treat ahead for you. mr. brinkley: thank you. what do you think of the accomplishments of the presidents from 1901-1909, what are the memorable accomplishments of that era? mr. leuchtenburg: i think one of the remarkable aspects of this is that we have never had a president who loved war more than the indoor roosevelt. and yet, nobody ever dies under

theodore roosevelt. save with respect to the insurrection that had begun prior to that time. he was a man who was a consummate war maker, but the first american to win the nobel peace prize. he is a welter of contradictions. but i think probably with respect to domestic policy, as to say what i said before, his extraordinary impact on american conservation, which affects not nearly of the saving of land and landmarks, in an imaginative way in which he used at pieces of

legislation designating areas of lesson all monuments with -- areas of national monuments with a questionable view of the constitutionality of what he was doing, but something with which we bless him today. mr. brinkley: in your chapter on bill clinton, you have an interesting little page, where you are discussing bill clinton discussing, whether he will be a great president, and theodore roosevelt gets the very near great category, meaning ranked fourth or fifth most historians. clinton is worried at that point, he's only in the middle, or that he's realizing he can never really be a great president, he doesn't have a major war, so he tries so become pr, maybe that is the marker you try to become a near great, not

just average person. do you think you door roosevelt -- theodore roosevelt was one of the great presidents? mr. leuchtenburg: i have no doubt. what we are talking about is what -- arthur schlesinger senior, in 1981, created a diagrammatic way of looking at american presidents. some are grouped as great, near great, average, below average, and failure. lots of historians are unhappy with that way of looking at greeting presidents, because there are opportunities offered to some presidents that are not offered to others, and greatness is an ambiguous term.

you could be great by having an extraordinary impact on an era, or the worst. more or less, even historians who are unhappy with this kind of categorization, they use it in their heads even if they do not use those precise terms. poll after poll has been taken more than a generation since then, and it only comes out the same way with only three presidents as great. abraham lincoln, franklin d. roosevelt, and george washington. he used to be lincoln, washington, fdr, but more recently it has been lincoln, fdr in washington. nobody appears, in the judgment of historians, likely to move into that top category.

and then there is a group just below that of near a great.theodore roosevelt is always pretty much at the top of that group, or close to it. mr. brinkley: theodore roosevelt won a landslide election in 1908, but by 19 -- i mean, in 1904, but by 1908 he decided not to run. he left in march with of 1909, turning over the republican party to william howard taft. who was taft, and what were the virtues of his presidency? mr. leuchtenburg: he was a commissioner in the philippines , he had been a member of theodore roosevelt cabinet. when i was a graduate student, we used to say, always trying to do our elders one better, that taft was actually more of progressive than teddy

roosevelt. more antitrust suits under taft proportionately then there were under teddy roosevelt. and elders were shaking, saying you don't understand, they had lived through that era. of course, they were right. maybe that is because i am an elder now. [laughter] mr. leuchtenburg: teddy roosevelt seems so much larger figure, taft said that he never thought of anybody as the president but teddy roosevelt, even when he was in the white house. often, at contrast with

progressives, teddy roosevelt, taft is thought of as conservative, although there are a number of ways in which taft did support progressive legislation and was far from being the right winger that he is often portrayed to be. nonetheless, there is a decided change of atmosphere in washington from teddy roosevelt attached. -- teddy roosevelt to taft. mr. brinkley: in that case, theodore roosevelt famously, part of his their chase hunting rules, that famous scene in mississippi delta plan they

caught a bear, and it had a rope around it, roosevelt said i will not shoot it, that is not hunting. there was a cartoon by a woman in brooklyn, saying roosevelt draws the line in mississippi not to kill that bear, and she writes, i would love to do a toy on that. and roosevelt said, you are welcome to, but nobody is going to care. but of course, the teddy bear becomes the most ubiquitous toy in history. part of the magic with teddy bears, they were dinners with a teddy bear as the centerpiece. william howard taft decided he needed to do something, and he created the billy possum toy. [laughter] none of you have one or have ever seen one, we have never seen anyone cuddle one. it was a hideous looking stuffed

toy. the point being, it was hard to follow and act like theodore roosevelt, who had so much magic, and so many reporters and cartoonists, and press apparatus that backed him so much. but taft loved pr in many ways. theodore roosevelt comes back and creates the most successful third-party in american history, the bull moose party, aimed at destroying taft. why does tr create the bull moose party? mr. leuchtenburg: when roosevelt comes back from africa, when he went off to africa to shoot lions, it was said that everyone in wall street hope every lion would do its duty. [laughter]

he manages to dominate the newspapers by his exploits in africa during the taft presidency. when he returns, he becomes considerably more radical, notably in a speech he gave in kansas. it was during the taft presidency. he is upset with taft, because in a controversy, taft had taken a sign that teddy roosevelt was not only not progressive, but was disrespectful of his views. by 1912, he decided that he was going to run for another term. he had technically, at a time when the george washington

example was still a strong move of not running for a third term, roosevelt was -- he had served two terms, but not eight years, so technically he was not violating it. but actually what he said was, it is true that i said i was not going to run for a third term, but that is like saying you are not going to have another cupcake. he tries to get the republican nomination in 1912, but taft having control of the party

machinery, is able to send him off. so he goes and runs as a third-party candidate, as a progressive candidate. in a dramatic speech, he says, i stand at armageddon, and i battle for the lord. and there is a notion of, the band strikes up at one point, onward christian soldiers. it is that kind of element to the campaign that was saying, it is the most successful third-party in history. taft actually runs third in the electoral college. roosevelt did not have enough to win the presidency. as a result, a democrat, who has only 42% of the popular vote, is able to get enough electoral

votes to slip in. that is how woodrow wilson becomes president of the united states. mr. brinkley: and theodore roosevelt takes the bullet from an assassin in milwaukee, he's bleeding, and he continues to speak. they say, it takes more than a bullet to kill a bull moose. he went on for an hour before they took him to the hospital. you become a folk figure when you survived that. but in 1919, for all purposes, that was his last major big political act. it is now woodrow wilson's moment. he seems -- arthur link did so many great books on woodrow wilson. john milton cooper junior did a

bag of the -- biography of woodrow wilson and theodore roosevelt. who was woodrow wilson? these having a moment now. hamilton is having a great moment. [laughter] woodrow wilson, there is a lot of controversy, where there is a woodrow wilson school named after him. but who was he, what should we know about him and admire about him? mr. leuchtenburg: when i was a student, i went to newtown high school in queens. as a boy, all my teachers were shipped woodrow wilson --worshipped woodrow wilson. the great moment in their lives was the creation of the league

of nations, and the failure of the united states to join. i tried to remember nowadays, if i mention a certain event which seems important to me, and i get a blank stare from younger people that what i am saying to them is what my teachers were saying to me when they talk about bosnia-herzegovina. bosnia-herzegovina was part of that whole mythos of woodrow wilson, and americans lost the opportunity to become a citizen of the world, and a belief that if only we had joined the league of nations, we could have staved off nazism, and avoided the death in world war ii. that is something that all of us of my generation grew up with. more recently, there has been a different sense of woodrow wilson. he is not the world's most

likable man. when you live with it as a writer, day in and day out -- one journalist of the time said, when i think of theodore roosevelt, i think of an exuberant, cherubic, larger-than-life figure. when i think of woodrow wilson, i think of -- there is a narrowness of the personality. and yet, numbers of things do get created under franklin roosevelt -- pardon me, under woodrow wilson. the federal reserve system would be one example. there was a far greater intervention in the economy in

world war i than the country had ever seen before. it doesn't leave this legacy -- it does leave this legacy of the league of nations. when word got out that woodrow wilson was dying, the numbers of people like pilgrims, in the snow, outside the windows of his home in washington, looking up at the window until the light that was at the window, that they had been looking at all the days since the end of his presidency, was extinguished. mr. brinkley: how do we judge wilson as commander-in-chief during world war i? was he successful as -- even though the league of nations failed, how was he has a wartime leader?

mr. leuchtenburg: the american troops come in at a time of disaster in 1916, with a million casualties. the allied cause was reeling. the american troops have -- provide a fresh spirit to the allied effort. for the most part, not the kind of controversy about wilson's role as commander-in-chief that there is about other american presidents. the period of intervention was relatively short, only from april 1917 to november of 1980, and it took -- 1918, and it took time for the troops to get overseas.

the main sense that one has is that wilson went along with the general staff that he inherited, and did nothing to interfere either for good or bad. he was not a particularly significant figure as far as that goes. mr. brinkley: now if we go to the 1920 election, and we get now warren harding becomes president, that is the first election women are voting for president. did the women vote help harding? how did the suffrage movement affect politics of this age? mr. leuchtenburg: for years i asked my graduate students, what was the main impact of women's suffrage? and i'm always surprised that

the answer, which is that it swells warren harding's margin of victory. that seems so counterintuitive. how can a great progressive movement of this sort have that consequence? the answer is that it takes a while for any new group of voters to become acclimated. the women who were most likely to vote in 1920 were well educated, upper-class women, associated with the republican party. and the women who are most likely to vote in 1920 were well-educated, harvard-class women who were associated with the republican party. so it is not one of the main consequences. he brings into the electorate women from different ethnic groups from different income classes who, until that point, had not voted. over time, the impact of women

on the electorate has been decidedly more progressive. if only men had voted in recent elections, no democrat would have ever been elected. this was first noted markedly in 1988, a campaign when it was said that women voted against the first george bush because they reminded him too much of their first husband. [laughter] in fact, there were very good reasons. particularly unmarried women or women who were the sole supporters of their children to be voting for the democratic rather than the republican

candidate. the immediate impact helped the republicans and that changed markedly over time. prof. brinkley: we were talking about these rankings where we do the great presidents. you usually see warren harding very low. sometimes at the bottom. i use as my marker you do not want to be right lower than william henry harrison, who was only president for a month and then died of pneumonia. if you are below harrison, you have problems. some have parting below william henry harrison. why is heartening -- harding so bad in history's judgment? prof. leuchtenburg: he obviously served longer than the first harrison.

he did not have a longtime, but he was a man who said of himself i don't belong in the white house. somewhere, if somebody could explain to me -- i am not smart enough to know, is a prophetic aspect of warren harding. -- a prophetic -- pathetic aspect of warren harding. there were parts of him that were likable. the socialist candidate for

president in 1912 opposed american activity in world war i and was sentenced to prison in an elective penitentiary. through the end of his presidency, woodrow wilson was asked to grant a pardon. by then, he had had a stroke and it was hard for him to wrote -- to write "denied." when harding was president, he not only pardoned them, but ask them to come by the white house and he signed it a bit early so that he could spend christmas dinner with his wife. harding bounced up and said, i have always wanted to meet you.

you got a sense of a man who was a man of goodwill, but very limited. the low ranking is not only because of that, but the corruption of members of this administration. prof. brinkley: calvin coolidge was sort of forgotten for a while. i remember when ronald reagan became president, he dusted off the old portrait of calvin coolidge and re-hung it in the white house as the new conservative hero. almost a rehabilitation of his reputation by the republicans, the conservative movement.

what was his presidency like? what should we we remember about the coolidge years? prof. leuchtenburg: there has been an attempt to elevate calvin coolidge. i am not likely to find myself in that number that thinks like that. it was a time of development of economic policies that helped lead to the wall street crash of 1929. and foreign policy, his record was negligible expect -- except for minor touches, sending marines into nicaragua. the one good thing that came out of the coolidge presidency was that he had a classmate at amherst, dwight morrow, and he was the ambassador to mexico. he was the real star of the good

neighbor policy, which begins not with franklin roosevelt, but with morrow's sense of behavior in mexico. there is a lot to like about harding. i think there is a lot to dislike about coolidge. when i taught at smith college for a couple of years, i lived down the street from grace coolidge and i thought she was a wonderful woman. calvin coolidge behaved abominably toward her. he would never let her speak. one wonderful moment came when -- they met when she was a teacher at clark school of the deaf and dumb in new hampton. there was a press conference at

which she felt she had to obey her husband, but she used sign language, which was able to defy him in that fashion. prof. brinkley: tell us about herbert hoover. you got to write a volume for the american presidency series. when you were writing that, you have obviously dealt with hoover a lot, but did you get any kind of new appreciation or herbert hoover as an american citizen, as a figure, or are you still fairly negative about him? prof. leuchtenburg: i think i am negative with respect to his performance as president. if you look at the whole of his career, in the final paragraph of the book, i say he saved more people than anyone else in the history of the world.

and that is true. and he often did not allow his political disposition to interfere with his humanitarian work. the soviet union, in the early 1920's, hoover, though he is closed bolshevism -- loathed bolshevism, provided so much aid to say -- he was written to say how many russian lives were saved by his activity. his whole career, as an engineer, was in government. he headed the food

administration in world war i. he was secretary of commerce through two administrations. he somehow convinced himself that only private volunteerism ever achieved anything, contrary to all that he had achieved as a federal agent. when it came to dealing with the great depression, he was contrary to the usual. a very active president, but only for a brief time, after which he last into the convention that voluntary effort was taking care of all the needs of the unemployed at a time when

his own age were telling him -- aides were telling him that people were actually starting to this is the tragedy of his life, this perception. prof. brinkley: could anybody beat franklin roosevelt in 1932? is it possible? should you think he could be a democrat in 1932? prof. leuchtenburg: the only possibility of defeating him would have been for the nomination. the democratic party, that late, still labored under two thirds rule.

in 1912, a candidate, champ clark of misery o --f missouri, garnered enough votes, but because he could not get two thirds, it went on ballot for ballot until woodrow wilson was nominated. in 1904, the validate went on -- the balloting went on for 103 roll calls before they could find the president. fdr was a very popular, powerful two-term president from new york state. it was not clear that he could overcome that advantage. as against hoover, it was clear that any democrat was going to be the victor. i once puzzled something out that i had not seen elsewhere. franken roosevelt, in 1932, is the first democrat to enter the white house with the majority of the popular vote, 50% or more,

in 80 years. that is how republican our country was. since franklin pierce in 1852, a few democrats slipped. cleveland twice, woodrow wilson, buchanan earlier, but not with 50% or more of the vote. almost a landslide. prof. brinkley: i think hoover famously sled -- famously said that fdr was a chameleon. fdr himself called himself the jugular. you never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. who was franklin roosevelt? you spent so much of your life studying him. do you feel that you understand his personality and what made him tick? prof. leuchtenburg: this was the

hardest chapter for me to write because i have written eight looks on roosevelt -- books on roosevelt before sitting down to write this book. you try to figure out how to say something new. to look at him with new eyes. that was the puzzle. the notion that roosevelt was a chameleon on plaid, that he was a man of no firm views, that he said yes to every last person that he talked to, is so common in the literature. and i think it is wrong. in 1990 -- in the 1990's, there was a conference at cambridge university. i was just mentioning my book, "in the shadow of fdr." this was called "in the shadow of luxembourg -- of

leuchtenburg." people talking about the influence i have had. they came all over the world for this conference. there was a british historian and he had had a little bit too much to drink. he kept saying something and people found it hard to understand what he was saying. but it was a speech that franklin roosevelt gave in 1912 in new york which gave a sense of the american state. unlike anything that any other american politician could imagine. he had a strong sense of

affirmative action by the federal government, by the president. he had to adapt to opposition in congress and elsewhere. throughout his life, he held firmly to this. after his death, it was said it you are not on, he would have moved in a conservative

direction. junior's response was, well, what we know about what roosevelt's beliefs were at the end of his life was the economic bill of rights. 1944, where he was talking about the extension of the new deal much more broadly than it had ever extended before. i think that notion that fdr is a man who is attempting to please all people, who is a chameleon on plaid, is widely held an interesting. prof. brinkley: how would you assess the new deal? you are someone who has written probably better than anybody on the new deal. which of the new deal programs do you admire the most? is there one that really garnered your interest over the decade? prof. leuchtenburg: the one that has meant the most to me is, in the summer of 1939, i was resigned to going by the l-train to a college in new york. it was a very fine college, but i was hoping i could get to cornell. in august, with the summer running out, there was a cutback on my grandparents farm.

there was a letter from one of my teachers saying that i had $100 a year toward tuition for four years at any college in new york state. there was another envelope from another teacher and it said i had $200 more a year for four years for cornell. it is hard to believe nowadays, but at an ivy league college, tuition was $400 a year.

so i was $100 a year short. i had $300. i got a job riding a bike sunnyside. good humor cost us a dime and the others cost us a nickel. day after day, i would sell him was nothing. registration was coming nearer and the repeated a young man told me franklin roosevelt was going to dedicate an extension of the boulevard. i completely sold out and got enough money to go to cornell. [laughter] incidentally, years later, i was commissioned to interview mario cuomo in albany.

i started one question by saying , now, you and i both grew up in queens. he said, sunnyside. i knew he had read the introduction of one of my books, where i tell that story. he said, you know, i never believed that story of yours. you must have had coke in that machine, meaning cocaine. [laughter] then i arrived at cornell and my parents gave me $15 a month for rent, food, everything. so i needed to find a job and somebody told me there was an organization called the national youth administration and i could get a job. so i had learned in high school

how to type papers. so the nya has meant a great deal to me. prof. brinkley: eleanor roosevelt, does she holed up in history as the great first lady? prof. leuchtenburg: absolutely. absolutely. i never really knew her to talk to, but i was in the room with her numbers of times. i always felt when i was with her, a stirring in the crowd in london and the rumor goes out around the crowd that royalty has moved by. she was the most direct kind of

person, the kindest woman. it was a sense of something special, something regal about her. it was wonderful to be in her presence. prof. brinkley: when fdr dies and the united nations is born, harry truman was the president. very quickly, in the truman years, we have bombs being dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki. how do you assess his decision to use atomic weapons to win the war against japan. prof. leuchtenburg: it is something that bothered me a long time at the time and i have never been able to shake it off since. there had already been so much devastation with ordinary bonds -- bombs in japan, dresden, and

elsewhere. we had not seen a very great step up beyond this. the more that i wrestled with it , the more i felt that he was at a culminating moment. someone said that if he had not used the bomb and there had been hundreds of thousands of more deaths, as there would have been , in the pacific, and it had been found out that it could have prevented those deaths by

this single am a terrible act, he not only would have been impeached and removed in office, but should have been. i quote in the book one of the aides as saying it was a horrible act. he said the whole goddamn war was horrible. there was going to be an awful loss of life no matter what. does not seem as decisive a moment as it once did. prof. brinkley: george died last week. i read his obituary. he was a great naval aide for f

dr. you have the only signed copy of the atlantic charter, the meeting in newfoundland, when roosevelt met churchill. it was actually a press release and that is all it was at that time. it was nothing signed by fdr. he was the young naval aide and he got the press release and asked fdr to sign it. so he had a signed atlantic charter document as a collector by franken roosevelt. fdr died in 1945. churchill continued. churchill came to the u.s. and he got to see churchill, handed him the atlantic charter and churchill looked at him and say -- and said, young man, you have a lot of value here if i sign this. you have the only signed copy of the atlantic charter. he went ahead and signed it. so he kept that document his whole life as a special heirloom. we have to march through these other presidents. let me just ask you to name a couple of the accomplishments of truman that you admire, things that he did from 1945-1953 that

you think were spot on. prof. leuchtenburg: some people have asked me what -- if you read the book, what surprised you the most. many of these are around harry truman. his impact on history is, i think, not sufficiently known. someone described him as being the caesar augustus to the changes wrought by franklin roosevelt. it was during his administration

that the executive office of the president really expanded. so many of the institutions that live on today, beautification of the armed forces, the department of defense, the cia, the atomic energy commission, the council of economic advisers, all began under harry truman. if you look at the impact on foreign policy, the creation of the united nations, the end of world war ii, the occupation of germany and japan, the berlin airlift, the truman doctrine, the marshall plan, the north atlantic treaty, the korean war. all of this happens under harry truman. most important of all, the civil rights messages. there is a civil rights committee and then his message to congress. in 1946, i was on the field staff of a civil rights organization in washington.

those of us on the staff could not sit down at a drugstore and have lunch together. we had to walk four blocks to an auditorium in order to be able to eat together. this in the nation's capital in 1946. truman's civil rights message in -- his appointment on the committee in 1947 and his message in february of 1948. after that, the intervention with amicus briefs and a number of civil rights cases before the

supreme court. that transformed the whole political landscape of civil rights. prof. brinkley: dwight eisenhower had his civil rights moments. earl warren being appointed to the supreme court. but how do we look at eisenhower used to be when i was going to grad school. there was a feeling that eisenhower farm things out to john foster dulles in foreign affairs and was golfing a lot, reading. now there has been, in the last decade, the revisionism. he was very hands-on, in charge of everything. do you consider yourself part of that wave of revising? did you miss something on eisenhower back then? do you think there is more to eisenhower than you thought? prof. leuchtenburg: yes, certainly. it was said that eisenhower, all memos were only a paragraph long so that his lips would not get tired. [laughter] there were bumper stickers

saying, if we are going to have a golfer in the white house, why not elect ben hogan? [laughter]